I seem to be unable to play audio CD's. I am using KDE 3.1 on Mandrake 9.1. I have a Sound Blaster Live! card installed. I am using the EMU10k1 driver.

I am able to play mp3's using xmms. However, xmms is unable to "see" my cd. I cannot mount the drive. But if I double-click on Home (on my desktop), I found a device manager of sorts that can identify each track of the CD. So I'm not understanding what is going on.

Using KCd, I get no audio at all. I've looked at some volume controls, but nothing appears muted.

Yesterday, before I rebooted, the volume control had listed for me four copies of the same sound card (EMU10K1) and I had maybe 30 sliders available. Today, only one is listed and only 10 or so sliders are available.

Can anybody lay out for me what is happening, and maybe tell me how to fix it?

Thanks, guys.

JasonD

Do you have a little cable running from your cd drive to your sound card? You need this to play audio cds in KsCD. If not, the cd will appear to be playing but you won't get any sound.

Make sure that there is a physical connection from your cdrom to the cdrom sound input located somewhere on the motherboard. If there is no cable connecting sound from the cdrom to the board, you will not hear anything. It's not like windoze where you can just play a cd.

I think that's your problem because i had the same one.

Adam
Toronto

Oop's...someone beat me to it :-)

This is a minor point, but just so you know.

Audio CDs can't be mounted, so you needn't worry about that.

**Side Note:

Would that little cable also apply to hearing your DVD's playing, because i get picture but no sound.....and no, i don't have the cable form my cdrom to the motherboard.

That sounds like your problem.

Also, AFAIK, Windows is the same way. you need a sound cable connection your CD drive to the board.

Nope....Windows Xp anyways, DOES NOT need the cable connected. I have that setup at home (on the wife's computer) and i was just listening to cd's on it this morning. :-)

Windows supports digital audio extraction which is why you don't need the cable. KsCd doesn't; the cable to the sound card allows for analog prcessing of the audio signal from the cdrom. With the right plugin you can set up digital audio extraction in xmms and play audio cds w/o the cable. But hey, the cable is a couple bucks at radio shack. I think you need it for dvd audio too; not positive on that.

That's interesting to learn. thanks.

Ya...thanks for the info :-))

But maybe a link to where you can get that plugin for xmms would be even better :-))))))

Yeah, but how well does it work to try to listen to CD's from more than one drive? For things like The Wall, I like to listen to 2-disk albums non-stop, and the only way I can do that if they're still on CD is if I have a playlist where it plays the songs on the first cd and then reads the second cd in the other drive. And how well does Linux support having two CD audio sources? Or does it just matter for the soundcard?